One of the signs that this near-vanished square was an important part of the woodworker’s kit is that it was used in signs and heraldry related to the craft.
The above image is the Cabinetmakers Coat of arms of the Vienna Commercial Co-operatives, circa 1900 (thanks to Jeff Burks for digging these images up). What makes this image particularly interesting is the metal sleeve around the blade of the square.
Could the metal sleeve be movable? Perhaps secured by a screw at the end of the brass flower? If so, it might be the long-lost ancestor to the Veritas Sliding Square.
Exhibit B: This is a 1554 wooden sign commemorating work done by the cabinetmakers guild in the Church of the Brethren; the photo is from the microfilm collection at the Städtisches Museum in the city of Braunschweig.
The Melencolia square is shown intertwined with a try square, next to a compass and above a plane – three of the most iconic early woodworking tools.
Exhibit C: An 18th-century shop sign from France. The square is crossed with a compass and try square. Thanks to Maurie Pommier, author of “Grandpa’s Workshop,” for pointing out this one, which is featured in W.L. Goodman’s “The History of Woodworking Tools.” This image was hiding in the section on saws.
And lastly, here is the square shown in the coat of arms for the joiners guild in Germany during the last decade of the 19th century. In this image there is no try square – only a compass, plane and the Melencolia square.
Next up: The easy-to-make Wierix Square. Or, as I call it, “Die Fledermaus.”
When I look at the moulded grip of one of these now-uncommon squares, several thoughts surface again and again.
1. The moulded stock looks like an offcut. Could it be a section of bannister?
2. I’ve never seen a bannister that looks like those moulded shapes.
3. It looks like two pieces of crown moulding glued together.
4. But there is no joint seam shown in the drawings. The stock looks like one piece.
5. Moulding both sides of the stock would be inconvenient from a workholding perspective.
6. Perhaps I’ll mould one piece and glue up the stock from two pieces of moulding.
Then I go back to No. 1 and repeat a few times until I get to No. 7. (Shut up and have a beer, son.) So for the first four of my Melencolia squares, I made the stock from one 6’ length of moulding that I planed up with hollows and rounds (Nos. 5, 12 and 14 to be exact). Then I cut a rabbet on the back of the moulding and chopped up the moulding into 4”-long pieces.
(Yes, I know there are other ways to do this that might be better. But I wanted to be able to tune each rabbet to fit its blade before assembly.)
Then I glued up the stock with hide glue. Easy.
The next batch of squares will be more Germanic and the stock will be from one piece. I have some nice superchunks of sapele left over from Roorkee chairs.
When I look at the blade of the square, here is my thought progression.
1. Was the decoration perhaps useful?
2. Remember the nib on handsaws.
3. Could the decoration serve some purpose for layout?
4. Remember the decorative shaped toe on Dutch saws.
5. Could the steps on the blade represent different common widths used in the shop?
6. Nobody asks why men have nipples do they? They just do.
7. Could the curves on the Swedish one be useful like a French curve in drafting?
8. Nipples aren’t really all that decorative, are they.
So my guess is the decorations are decorative, and make for a decorative effect. But feel free to plug away with your own theories.
I made the blade 3/8” thick because I didn’t want to plane down the maple any more than necessary. The next batch will use 1/4”-thick blades. I merely glued the blades into the stocks. There is no evidence of pinning in the Melencolia square, though Moxon and Holme say it is both glued and pinned in the similar miter square.
So I’ll add some pins in the next batch.
Next up, a detour into the world of workshop signage and its connection to the square. Plus, a version that has an intriguing metal part.
The Northern European square from Melencolia looks a lot like a tool that shows up in several early English and French texts on woodworking.
But the drawings of this tool – the miter bevel – have always bothered me. It’s really a problem of perspective (or lack of perspective). But the miter bevel, when drawn, looks like a dead ringer for the Melencolia square.
Take a look at the image above. It’s from André Félibien’s “Princips de l’architecture…,” which is where Joseph Moxon cribbed his illustrations for “Mechanick Exercises.” Félibien calls the tool (Q) the “Triangle angle,” whereas the traditional try square to its left is called a “Triangle quarré.” “Quarré” being the word for “square” in this instance.
If you look at the drawing of the Triangle angle it’s easy to be fooled that all of the lines are either parallel or 90° to one another and you are looking at it from a highly foreshortened perspective.
Moxon’s drawing of the same tool copies the image. And Randle Holme III’s “The Academy of Armory, or, A Storehouse of Armory and Blazon” looks even less like a bevel square to my eye.
It’s only the text that really makes thing clear. (You can read the original text from both Moxon and Holme at the end of the article.)
What finally made the scales fall from my eyes was to see a real bevel square. Thanks to my good friend Bengt Nilsson, a Swedish woodworker and my sometimes-assistant when I teach in Germany, we have this image from his trip to Skokloster palace, which has a remarkable collection of 17th- to 19th -century woodworking tools. Many of them unused.
Here you can see how the thing really looks. The photograph refuses to allow our minds to trick us into seeing 90° when there is 45°. And hey, look, a Melencolia square is right next to it with a very decorative blade. Thanks Bengt!
The point of this blog entry isn’t about my trouble with perspective. Instead, it’s to show the clear structural relationship between the Melecolia square and the more-common bevel square. They both have short stocks and long blades. And both are now (almost) extinct.
Next: Other images of the Melencolia square and discussing its construction.
— Christopher Schwarz
Randle Holme III’s “The Academy of Armory, or, A Storehouse of Armory and Blazon:”
CXXXVIII. The first Tool in this square is termed a Miter square, of a contrary form to the following, mentioned chap.9. numb.17. It hath an Handle (or top part) an Inch thick, and three broad, with a Tongue of the same breadth, and for length 5, 6, or more inches, according to the breadth of the Work: it is to be Glewed into the Handle by a Mortess and Pinned.
Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises…:”
S. 18. Of the Miter Square. And its Uſe.
The Miter Square marked E, hath {as the Square} an Handle marked a, one Inch thick, and three Inches broad, and a Tongue marked b, of about the ſame breadth: The Handle and the Tongue {as the Square} have both their Sides parallel to their own Sides. The Handle {as the Square} hath in the middle of its narroweſt Side a Morteſs in it, of an equal depth, the whole length of the Handle: Into this Morteſs is fitted one end of the Tongue, but the end of the Handle is firſt Bereld off to make an Angle of 45 Degrees with its inſide. This Tongue is {as the Square} Pin’d and Glewed into the Morteſe of the Handle.
It is uſed for ſtriking a Miter-line, as the Square is to ſtrike a Squareline, by applying the inſide of the Handle to the outſide of the Quarter, or Batten, you are to work upon; and then by ſtriking a Line by the ſide of the Tongue: For that Line ſhall be a Miter-line. And if upon two Battens you ſtrike two ſuch Lines, and Saw and Pare them juſt off in the Lines, when the flats of thoſe two ſawn ends are applied to one another, the ont and inſide of the Battens, will form themſelves into the Figure of a Square.
For building furniture, I prefer wooden layout tools. They’re lightweight, easy to maintain and easy to make. Even more important than those three qualities is that their accuracy is perfect for woodworking.
Machinist tools in the woodshop can make you chase your tail at times, trying to fix problems that aren’t there and working to levels of precision that are are unnecessary for even the fussiest furniture.
So when I see a wooden layout tool in an old print that I’ve never encountered, it’s only a matter of time before I make one to try out in the shop.
A couple of years ago, Jeff Burks sent me a series of images, many of which I’d seen before. But what I hadn’t seen is what the images all had in common: an extinct square with a long and decorative blade, a short stock (or handle) that was heavily moulded and a hang hole.
The square seems most common to Northern Europe, especially the Netherlands and Germany. And most of the images of it (so far) are circa 16th and 17th century. The square – and I don’t even know if that’s the correct word to describe the tool – was common enough that it was used as a symbol for a joiner or cabinetmaker in shop signage and heraldry.
This week I’ve built four versions of this square, and I have put them into use in my shop. They do two things really well: They are an excellent straightedge, and they are a compact square that is effective when dealing with dressed (not rough) boards.
I have a lot of notes on this tool that have accumulated during the last two years. I considered pitching this as a story to Popular Woodworking Magazine, but I have too much material to cover it effectively in a magazine article. So instead, I’m going to post it all here on the blog in several parts.
Let’s first look at some historical images that have this straightedge/square and discuss what is shown there.
My favorite image of the square is in Albrecht Dürer’s “Melencolia I,” a 1514 engraving that shows the tool next to a wooden smoothing plane at the bottom left of the image. Dürer, who is perhaps the most important artist of the Northern Renaissance, traveled all over Europe. He was based in Nuremberg but traveled to (and was influenced by) Italy and the Netherlands.
The straightedge/square is shown in the same plane as the handplane, so if we assume the plane is about 9” long, here are the roughish dimensions of the layout tool: The stock of the square is 1” thick and 2” wide. The blade is 1/4” and extends out of the stock about 7”.
This German woodcut from the mid 16th century by Jost Amman has been copied a number of times. It’s from a series of engravings representing the different crafts and was made in Nuremberg. The straightedge/square is shown upright and next to a try square. What is notable about this version is that its moulding profile is quite different. The stock is widest at the end and narrows toward the blade.
Also, the blade of the tool has a different profile – the tapering and decoration are confined more to the end of the tool. It’s difficult to scale this tool from its surroundings, but I think it’s fair to say its stock is thicker than the Melencolia I square, but the blade is about the same length.
This 1561 piece of marquetry is a tabletop from a guild table that is now owned by the Stadtmuseum in Bolzano, in Northern Italy. When it comes to representations of woodworking tools, I think it’s best to trust woodworkers. So this one has particular merit.
The straightedge/square is shown in the bottom right of the image – and the blade of the tool is crossed with the blade of another similar tool. Proportionally, this tool has a stock that is similar to the Nuremberg image above, but the blade has a shape that is more like the Dürer illustration.
What I think is important about this marquetry illustration of the tool is that it is shown in a grouping with a try square, so it’s possible the tools were distinct from one another – both are as important to the work as a bowsaw, glue pot or workbench.
These images from before 1619 by Hieronymus Wierix are held by the British Museum and are considered “Netherlandish.” Both of these images depict scenes from the life of Christ and show a different form of this straightedge/square that looks more like a SpeedSquare than the forms shown elsewhere. The stock is longer and thinner. And the blade is notably wider.
Yes, but what about England? Did the English use this tool?
